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Tax loss harvesting is selling a security that has experienced a loss—and then buying a similar asset to replace it. The switch does two things: it allows the investor to realize, or “harvest”, a valuable loss while keeping the portfolio balanced at the desired allocation.

Capital losses can lower your tax bill by offsetting other gains or ordinary income up to certain levels. But the only way to realize a loss is to sell the asset that has experienced a loss. However, in a well-allocated portfolio, each asset plays an essential role in providing a piece of total market exposure. For that reason, an investor should not want to give up the expected returns associated with each asset just to realize a loss.

Betterment’s Tax Loss Harvesting+ algorithm carefully manages your Betterment investment according to these guidelines, and automates—at no additional cost—what was historically a tricky, time-consuming process only available for a hefty fee.

It would be virtually impossible for an individual to replicate the precision and harvesting frequency we deploy for customers at Betterment. Our algorithms work across multiple accounts and regularly scans for harvesting opportunities—along with sophisticated accounting—using complex logic to determine an optimal potential tax outcome for the customer.

We do things differently. Often, brokerages that do automated tax loss harvesting will switch out of a replacement security after 30 days. If there is a market upswing during that time, customers will incur a short-term capital gain when the broker does the ‘switchback.’ We have eliminated this ‘switchback tax’ because we are able to manage two similar ETFs per asset class in a portfolio using our innovative Parallel Position Management system.

What else makes us different? We provide the real numbers—not marketing hype around tax loss harvesting. Other investment managers may tout a bigger number on their websites, but look closely and you'll see that the number represents the mean annual offset, not real tax alpha given different liquidation scenarios. Measuring the value of harvesting this way is misleading, and not the way we present the benefit. However, when we used that method and compared apples-to-apples, we found that over the last 13 years, Betterment's mean annual tax offset was 2x greater than what you can get with methods used by the competition.

How did we accomplish that? One reason is TLH+ avoids tax-indifferent switchbacks, and never caused negative tax offsets over that period, even though the portfolio was rebalanced.

Given that improvement, here's how tax alpha looks for a sample investor. A person with annual income of $100,000 living in a high-income tax state such as California who initially invested $50,000 and invested $1,500 per month (increasing those deposits annually by 5% to account for salary growth and inflation), would have seen a real value +0.77% in additional returns between 2000-2013, even assuming that he liquidates 50% of the portfolio in 2014.
That’s extra returns for doing nothing other than turning on TLH+ — no extra risk, no additional costs. Just smart investing. The competition ignores liquidation, which would expose their algorithms as being far less effective. With TLH+...

You are never exposed to short-term capital gains in an attempt to harvest losses. Through our proprietary Parallel Position Management system, a dual-security asset class approach which enforces preference for one security, we never trigger capital gains in an attempt to harvest losses.

You have zero cash drag at all times. With fractional shares, and seamless handling of all inflows during wash sale windows, every dollar is always invested at the desired allocation risk level.

Your harvests also serve as an opportunity to rebalance across all asset classes, rather than re-invest solely within the same asset class. This further reduces the need to rebalance during volatile stretches, which means fewer realized gains, and higher tax alpha.

You never experience disallowed losses through overlap with your IRA. We use a tertiary ticker system, completely eliminating the possibility of harvested losses being permanently disallowed due to IRA activity. This makes our TLH+ ideal for those who invest in both taxable and tax-advantaged accounts.

​TLH+ is available to all Betterment customers regardless of their balance, at no additional cost. Other services require a balance of $50,000 or more to access a tax loss harvesting service.

You can read more about the benefits of TLH+ and how it works inside your account in our white paper. ​

The wash sale rule disallows the realization of a loss from selling a security if a "substantially identical" security is purchased 30 days before or after the sale. The rationale is that a taxpayer should not enjoy the benefit of deducting a loss if he or she did not truly dispose of the security.

The wash sale rule applies not just to situations when a "substantially identical" purchase is made in the same account, but also when the purchase is made in the individual's IRA account, or even in a spouse's account. This broad application of the wash sale rule seeks to ensure that investors cannot utilize nominally different accounts to maintain their ownership, and still benefit from the loss.

​This includes your spouse’s holdings (IRA, 401k and taxable investments)—even one dividend reinvestment elsewhere can throw off Betterment's careful harvests and reduce your net tax benefit. (The IRS does not consider a shift of ownership from one spouse to another as a true disposal, for purposes of the wash sale rule.)

You especially want to avoid a wash sale involving an IRA account. In general, a "washed" loss is postponed until the replacement is sold, but if the replacement is purchased in an IRA account, the loss is permanently disallowed.

Using our Parallel Position Management system, we weigh wash sale implications of every deposit and withdrawal and dividend reinvestment, and systematically choose the better outcome. The system protects against IRA wash sales in a completely unique and airtight way—nobody else does this. Additionally, it protects not just harvested losses, but also losses realized through customer withdrawals. When appropriate, TLH+ even optimizes deposits prior to a harvest, potentially allocating to alternate assets in anticipation of harvesting.

Betterment is the only investing service to provide tax loss harvesting in coordination with an IRA account to maximize the benefit.

Tax loss harvesting can be beneficial for many investors—provided that the IRS allows you to write off losses against capital gains and/or up to $3,000 of ordinary income. Any losses not used to offset gains and/or $3,000 of ordinary income can be carried forward indefinitely until used up. The earlier you start tax loss harvesting—and the higher your current tax bracket—the more beneficial it can be over time.

However, harvesting causes you to lower your basis, which can mean more taxes in the future—unless you don’t plan to liquidate your investments. That means deferring all gains can be an especially good strategy if you plan to donate to charity or leave your assets to your heirs, which results in a step-up in basis.

There are some specific instances when you should not use TLH+ or should proceed with caution. Tax deferral may be undesirable if your future tax bracket will be higher than your current. If you expect to achieve (or return to) substantially higher income in the future, tax loss harvesting may be exactly the wrong strategy—it may, in fact, make sense to harvest gains, not losses.

In particular, we do not advise you to use TLH+ if you can currently realize capital gains at a 0% tax rate. Under current law, this may be the case if you are in the 10% or 15% ordinary income tax brackets. See for more details from the IRS. Also, if you are planning to withdraw a large portion of your taxable assets in the next 12 months, you should wait to turn on TLH+ until after the withdrawal is complete to reduce the possibility of realizing short term capital gains.

Please consult your tax advisor if you have questions about how these guidelines may apply to your personal situation.

When you enable TLH+, you can maximize your benefit by contributing on a regular basis (by auto-depositing once or twice per month, for example) in order to create more opportunities for harvesting.

Additionally, move your investments with similar securities, including IRAs, to Betterment, so that we can provide the service holistically with no threat of a wash sale.
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For example, if you have a taxable account or IRA that has any of the ETFs we use, e.g., VTI or VWO, move them to Betterment if you plan to enable TLH+. View the full list of tickers we use in our 12 asset class portfolio here.

You will receive a 1099-B corresponding to any tax loss harvests that occur in your account during the year (as harvests involve a sale in order to realize a loss). This is in addition to non-TLH related investment sales generally (e.g. money withdrawals, allocation changes, or portfolio rebalances).

The way we’ve built goals to interact with tax lots, you get the best of both worlds. Goals give you an intuitive way to visualize your savings in different buckets, with different allocations and horizons. They also give you the ability to sell the most optimal lot available in your entire portfolio, whichever goal you’re selling from. So when we run harvesting, we are looking for losses across all goals.

When you make withdrawals, we are looking for the most tax-efficient way to sell tax lots, from your entire portfolio (regardless of which goal you are withdrawing from). Think of it as a bunch of swapping that happens under the hood: for example, “Goal A” needs to sell some VTI for a withdrawal, but "Goal B" has a more tax-efficient lot of VTI to sell. TaxMin chooses to sell the “best” share of VTI from your entire portfolio. So when you need to withdraw from short-term goals, we'll select the most tax-efficient lots, from the entire portfolio.

Tax-advantaged retirement accounts, including Roth and Traditional IRAs, are already tax-free or tax-deferred, and it is not possible to harvest losses in these accounts to reduce taxes.

However, if you hold taxable and IRA accounts at Betterment, TLH+ does properly coordinate wash sale management across the accounts, ensuring that a harvested loss will never get permanently disallowed. This is a feature unique to TLH+.

The easiest way to transition is often by selling the other investments and transferring the cash into a Betterment account via your linked bank account. Once you make the deposit, the funds are seamlessly invested into our globally diversified portfolio of ETFs. Once you meet the requirement, you can enable TLH+ at any point.

Note: If you’re planning to sell investments held with other investment managers in order to move to Betterment, you may incur taxes. However, the cost of those taxes may well be more than made up for with the benefits investment switch. With our investment-switch calculator you can determine the time-value horizon for switching investments.

For new or existing customers, you will need to enable TLH+ from the Summary tab by clicking Get Started in the overview section. Once TLH+ is enabled, harvests will occur automatically according to our algorithm.

To turn on Tax Loss Harvesting+, first log in to your Betterment account. On the Summary tab, click “Get Started” in the Tax Loss Harvesting+ part of the overview section. As part of the enablement process, you will answer a couple questions to ensure you are eligible. Once you have enabled TLH+, it can take up to one business day for your portfolio to transition and for harvest checks to begin.

When Tax Loss Harvesting+ is enabled, you will see the total amount of losses harvested on the Summary tab in the Overview section. You will also see transaction confirmations on the Activity tab when harvests occur, and will receive email notifications like you do for all transactions. Your portfolio Analysis page (example below) will show you both primary and parallel tickers—and the percentage of each you are holding.

Tax Loss Harvesting+ is only one piece of the suite of tax optimization services we offer to all customers. More tax benefits we include:
​Tax Impact Preview allows customers to see the estimated tax consequences of a withdrawal, allocation change, or goal-to-goal transfer before they complete the transaction. This allows customers to make tax-informed decisions when managing their investments.

TaxMin lot selling Every customer benefits from our TaxMin cost basis accounting method, where we sell lots with losses before gains, and lots with long-term gains before short-term gains. It is a more efficient way to handle accounting that can save thousands in taxes.

Smart rebalancing We use all cash flows and dividends as an opportunity to rebalance your portfolio. This reduces the need for hard rebalancing, which lowers your capital gains tax over time. Our sophisticated infrastructure will never rebalance your short-term capital gains.

Assetlocation In your non-IRA accounts, one asset class includes municipal bonds where you will be exempt from federal and most state taxes. We’ll put core bonds in your IRA accounts, where they can grow tax-free.

A switchback occurs when you purchase a correlated replacement security in order to harvest a loss, but switch back to the original security after 30 days, regardless of whether it has lost or gained valued. It’s a common approach for both advisors and DIY investors, and used by other automated investing services. It can potentially trigger short-term capital gains, and undo the benefits of harvesting.

Betterment’s Tax Loss Harvesting+ utilizes a Parallel Position Management system to avoid switching back to the original security unless it is tax efficient to do so. Learn more about the Parallel Position Management in our white paper.

Unless otherwise specified, all return figures shown above are for illustrative purposes only, and are not actual customer or model returns. Actual returns will vary greatly and depend on personal and market circumstances.

Brokerage services provided to clients of Betterment LLC by Betterment Securities, an SEC registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC.
Investments: Not FDIC Insured • No Bank Guarantee • May Lose Value. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is always the potential of losing money when you invest in securities. Before investing, consider your investment objectives and Betterment's charges and expenses. Betterment's internet-based services are designed to assist clients in achieving discrete financial goals. They are not intended to provide comprehensive tax advice or financial planning with respect to every aspect of a client's financial situation and do not incorporate specific investments that clients hold elsewhere. For more details, see our see our Form ADV Part 2 and other disclosures. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and the likelihood of investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature. See full disclosures for more information. Not an offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell securities in jurisdictions where Betterment is not registered. Market Data by Xignite.